Factorio Design Issues

[Deadly-Bagel]

I agree with pretty much everything you say about combat. It's a shame that the devs don't actually want this to be a fun combat game like Crimsonland, they want to focus on the automated defense aspect. But it's their choice and we have no choice but to respect that.

More accurately they want you to focus on the factory. It's Factorio, not Defendio or Survivio.

Oh, as for vehicles becoming obsolete, mods can help with that too. For instance bob's mods have mk2-mk3 tanks, and vehicle equipment for both cars and tanks (putting a shield on a car makes trees much less annoying).

Bob's stuff is designed to scale the same way as the base game. This means the vanilla tank vs Big Biters is about as effective as his MK3 tank vs his late game biters. Personally I would prefer all that effort mining, refining and researching allow me to steamroll over whatever lays in my path (thinking along the lines of the Baneblade).

[obuw]

More accurately they want you to focus on the factory. It's Factorio, not Defendio or Survivio.

It's ok, they can focus on whatever they would like, it's their game of course. It's great that there are enemies, turrets, vehicles and all that in the game already, so we can mod the game to utilize its untapped potential and enjoy it the way we want. Personally my reason for making these suggestions is to help them improve the combat, because I feel that with a better combat system in vanilla, the game would attract an even wider playerbase. Of course that is just my opinion.

Bob's stuff is designed to scale the same way as the base game. This means the vanilla tank vs Big Biters is about as effective as his MK3 tank vs his late game biters. Personally I would prefer all that effort mining, refining and researching allow me to steamroll over whatever lays in my path (thinking along the lines of the Baneblade).

Bob's vehicles can be used all the way in the endgame thanks to vehicle equipment, but a power armor is usually sufficient in most cases. Of course a baneblade would be pretty awesome.

Fun thing about the tanks is that the laser defenses in your suit can still work while inside the tank, so you can just throw away all the shields and load up on tons of laser defense, then get in the tank for protection. With bob's mods, you can then put even more laser defenses in the tank and rely on a personal roboport for repairs, or put some shields to protect the tank while your power armor's laser defenses rip the biters to shreds.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Except they don't rip the biters to shreds, not the hordes of them that are inevitably present by that point in the game anyway.

[obuw]

Are we talking bob's mods or vanilla here?

[Deadly-Bagel]

Both lol

[obuw]

Well my memory is hazy from the fact I usually play with my mod also adjusting things, but iirc bob's mk6 lasers do pretty insane damage. You just walk and everything gets melted?